Bill Gates arrested in his younger days (photo in public domain)

As previously discussed, the admirable state of Massachusetts is able to recognise problems with closed applications and proprietary formats. It is now confirmed that Massachusetts will carry on and dispose of Office in a staged migration to OpenDocument, culminating in 2007.

With Microsoft’s OpenOffice XML the loser to OpenDocument in Massachusetts, the war of desktop formats is likely to spread to other governmental bodies, says one participant in the deliberations who sees the decision as a tipping point.

“In many ways it becomes circular,” said Doug Heintzman of IBM in an interview Friday. “It emboldens other entities. We are on the cusp of a big change.”

Immense perseverance at Microsoft did not help avoid this key loss of the Massachusetts ‘flagship’. Awakened interest in Linux recently emerged among African governments as well. Only last week, South Africa wished to ditch proprietary and get rid of hundreds of millions (USD) worth of licences. All the same, it is still worth reading the open letter from the KDE team to Microsoft.

Is this the beginning of the end for Office proprietary?

CWORLD.COM are reporting that Google Video, a service that allows users to browse and view a large variety of videos, integrates a media player so that everything can be played in the browser, making it irrespective of the platform.

The service’s videos now play within a Web browser without the need for additional software, says Peter Chane, senior business product manager for Google Video.

Moreover, the previously Windows-only playback service is now available to users whose PCs run the Linux and Mac OS operating systems.

The move makes it rather clear why Microsoft are terribly afraid of Google. Proprietary and incompatibilities with competing platforms have thus far been Windows’ major lock-in factor. Google, who are Linux-oriented, appear to open up the Web, media included. Web-based media players mark a beautiful milestone.

Google Video features are also mentioned in today’s item from the official Google Blog

How much diversity can the industry handle?

HERE has been a recent shakeup in the O/S battlescene. Many factors led to the narrow existence of Linux, Windows and the Mac in that conceptual picture which contains significant platforms. Other platforms are no longer catered for; support for them becomes a rarity.

Companies are beginning to leave aside Palm OS as we know it (e.g. Skype who changed their minds) while gaming systems like Nintendo approach their misfortunate end. The future of the Sony playstation appears uncertain as Sony issue warnings and are headed into some financial trouble.

Likewise, phones running Symbian OS will soon be suffering from so-called “smart phones”. We do not hear much about Solaris anymore, UNIX (not Linux) is seeing its demise, as well as OS/2 which had nails hammered to its coffin as IBM recently called it quits. Meanwhile, Apple ‘feed’ on their music players the most.

The Palm Treo 700 is going to run Windows — that is — Palm negotiate with their former sworn enemy of Palm OS. Later on in the future, Palm should complete their promised move to Linux, but one would have to express doubt as they were recently bought by Access. As it currently stands nonetheless:

Palm Inc. is teaming up with Microsoft Corp. to launch a Windows-based version of the Treo smart phone, marking the first time the handheld computer pioneer will sell a device based on its former rival’s software.

Related items:

• Google OS – What if?
• Linux console
• The Linux PDA Showcase
• HP to Ship Linux
• Third Linux Box – with reference to Linux from Dell

Cited by: PalmAddict

ROWING criticism becomes apparent as personal information on the Internet breaks new boundaries. This recently had CNET ignored by Google. CNET correspondent bluntly disclosed too much information about the personal life of Google CEO, Eric Schmidt. From that damaging article, which among another things, penerated a life of an individual:

“Your search history shows your associations, beliefs, perhaps your medical problems. The things you Google for define you,” Bankston (staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation) said.

The only way to avoid nasty information from ever being dispersed across the Internet is for everyone to recognise the danger of mentioning names. However, it is possibly too late already — too late to revert things, that is. The Web Archive, as controversial as it may seem, takes snapshots of the Internet periodically and makes these snapshots publicly available. Anything that was ever public remains public, perhaps under a few extra layers. Google cache introduces similar issues.

Recruitment agents or bosses can find out a lot about an individual nowadays. As a personalised instance, a search for my name (in Google) brings up approximately 70,000 results. Adding an extra term to query, ‘roy schestowitz microsoft’, for example, will draw a vivid picture of my mental views on the company. There are nearly 1,000 results for such a Web search.

Privacy is in jeopardy and is bound to be completely compromised as time carries on. Names do not have to be ‘contributed’ by will. Rather often these days, somebody else might mention one’s name, which will later be harvested and made available to anyone who ‘googles’ the name and binds it to some context. It was not too hard to discover a fair deal about families of famous IT founders. There needn’t be the will to disclose that information either. Sooner or later it will ‘leak’ and be made easily available due to. Search on the Web, as well as blogging, are a mixture that leads to dissemination and duplication. Take the embarrassing photo of Bill Gatesas a practical example.

On a different yet related topic, search engines slowly embrace spying, whether intentionally so or not, whether it is ethical or not. It is perhaps due to pressure from investors, who urge to do all that is necessary for increased profit. An IPO is never too helpful in that sense. There is a great deal of fuss revolving around the notorious Google cookie. Microsoft have been labelled “guilty” as well for MSN targetted advertising which involves spying, as well cross-site cookies exchange. Technologies advance and allow better monitoring than ever before, which is factor that raises even more concerns.

Has your privacy been broken apart? If not, it is probably just a matter of time.

A repeated argument of mine gains strength and gets somewhat augmented as the president of Sun Microsystems speaks out. He recently predicted the diminish of the personal computer, which slowly gives way to on-line services.

The majority of the applications that will drive the next wave of innovation will be services, not applications that run on the desktop. The real innovation is occurring in the network and the network services.

In essence, the Personal computer becomes a host. Looking at an alternative direction, data itself, as well as an O/S and applications, can be accessed via the network (network boot) or even from a pocket-sized device. Whether that path will wind up catching on or not — this we are yet to discover.

The little ‘object’ on the left has the most responsibility. The laptop may act as merely a relic, a host.

The idea of “Web-based everything” is not far-fetched. As we already see complex, JavaScript-based HTML Editors, maybe documents and spreadsheets will turn Web-based in the near future. Physical output can be printed from the browser, resulting in rich, high-quality layout as we approach Web 2.0 (some would argue 1.5) and CSS 2 (and higher). If you are inclined to think that the idea is preposterous, have a look at a complex Web-based mail client that relies heavily on several Web technologies which are available and are properly supported by all major platforms.

There are many more state-of-the-art examples, which embrace that approach of complex AJAX-reliant design, e.g.:

• Managing To-Do Lists On-Line – scheduling moved on-line
• Remote Data – user data managed on-line
• Interactive Design – Web-based applications that are highly interactive

Longhorn beta – recent screenshot

ANY must have wondered why the latest version of Windows, namely Windows XP, dates back to the end of 2001. Moreover, one might ask, why has it been so fragile and susceptible to attacks? Service packs were merely a plaster that covered up a variety of loopholes. Monthly security patches did not help credibility either.

Spherical desktop – experimental demo

It turns out that Windows is a collection of component stitched together rather poorly. A Wall Street Journal article reveals that Windows Vista had to be re-built in a simplified manner, some would say “from scratch”. The name of that article, quite surprisingly and yet not out of the ordinary, is “Battling Google, Microsoft Changes How It Builds Software“. As mentioned earlier today, Microsoft surely recognise Google and respect their status as the main rivals. On the contrary, Microsoft CEO still refuses to openly express fears due to Linux. From the WSJ:

REDMOND, Wash. — Jim Allchin, a senior Microsoft Corp. executive, walked into Bill Gates’s office here one day in July last year to deliver a bombshell about the next generation of Microsoft Windows.

“It’s not going to work,” Mr. Allchin says he told the Microsoft chairman. The new version, code-named Longhorn, was so complex its writers would never be able to make it run properly.

The news got even worse: Longhorn was irredeemable because Microsoft engineers were building it just as they had always built software. Throughout its history, Microsoft had let thousands of programmers each produce their own piece of computer code, then stitched it together into one sprawling program. Now, Mr. Allchin argued, the jig was up. Microsoft needed to start over.

Related Vista/Longhorn items:

• Competition:
  • Novell: Vista to Drive User to Linux
  • Vista Perils
  • Evolve or Die
• Performance:
  • Windows Vista Hogs Resources
  • Spherical Desktop
• Looks:
  • Microsoft Steal the Mac GUI? Again?
  • XP + New Colours = Longhorn
  • Microsoft Battles Screenshots
• Others:
  • Windows Command-Line Interface Delays
  • Longhorn: A Trainwreck?

Update: a more profound article on the subject appeared in The Register the following day.

recently came across a fantastic Linux-based, pocket-sized machine which boasts several desireable features. The name of the device is the GP2X. It has a dual CPU and a 720×480 pixels display. It is capable of running games such as Quake, play music, and store photos, among other things. Overall, it sounds very promising and goes for the price of 125 British pounds (approximately $190).

As Palm have decided to migrate to Linux, I can’t wait to see what they have in store.